Guinness Book Of World Records

A 72-year-old La Crescenta woman who survived 37 years in an iron lung after being stricken by polio, has died. Laurel Nisbet, credited by the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the longest survivor of that mechanical respirator, died Friday in a Los Angeles hospital following surgery. She contracted polio in 1948 and was paralyzed from the neck down. Despite her paralysis she managed to oversee a household that included a husband and now-grown son and daughter.

One of the world's oldest chimps, Fifi, has died in Australia, zoo officials said Friday. Fifi, the matriarch of the 18 chimpanzees at Sydney's Taronga Zoo, celebrated her 60th birthday in May with cupcakes and coconuts among four generations of her family. But Fifi, who had arthritis in her later years, stayed in bed Thursday morning, raising suspicions among the keepers that she was unwell. She died that afternoon.

A total of 3,000 volunteer hula dancers will sway--hopefully in unison--across Honolulu's Waikiki Beach starting at 6 p.m. Saturday in Hawaii's first-ever "Waikiki Hula." The event, which organizers hope to enter in the Guinness Book of World Records, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the state's Aloha Festivals. The hula is among scores of special events in September and October during the festivals, founded in 1946 as Aloha Week to honor Hawaiian culture.

Will (Pops) Jamerson, 117, who was unable to qualify as the world's oldest man. Jamerson failed to meet the criteria for the Guinness Book of World Records because he never had a birth certificate and could not prove his birth date of May 28, 1873. The date had been recorded in the family Bible, but that was destroyed in a fire at the family homestead in Broken Bow, Okla. Guinness listed the world's oldest man as John Evans, who died at 112.

A Japanese mental health counselor broke the record for reciting pi from memory. Newspaper pictures showed Akira Haraguchi, 59, screwing up his face with concentration as he recited pi, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, to 83,431 decimal places. Haraguchi hopes to be listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, replacing the current record-holder, who recited pi to 42,195 decimal places, Kyodo news agency said.

Dzhumber Lezhava returned to Tbilisi, Georgia, ending a nine-year bike trip around the globe. Lezhava, 63, began Aug. 13, 1993. He traveled 164,000 miles and wore out nine bicycles. He decided to make the journey after his wife died. "I couldn't sit at home," he said. Lezhava avoided Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea and a few war-torn African nations. He said he hopes to get his name in the Guinness Book of World Records for the feat.